I’ve posted this video or a similar one before. What I could not convey with words at the time was the ways in which it felt personal.

I don’t cook. I don’t do dishes. One of the things I admired about M was her ability to do things I found absolutely maddening, like cooking from scratch. Part of what bound me to the idea of her was the sacrifices, from my perspective at the time, she made to help nourish me/us. It ties to times I struggled as a kid with being insatiable at times when we didn’t have enough resources to go around.

At the same time that she was feeding me/us she was poisoning me not literally (as far as I know) but psycho-emotionally.

She was unhealthy for me and it was difficult to let go of the idea of us being together because I thought that we simply had misunderstandings that could be fixed/resolved. I didn’t realize that she engineered the misunderstandings so she could gain sympathy; she hijacked my compassion , kindness, and understanding to get her supply of validation and sympathy. She was objectively a shitty person who lied to everyone in her circle to avoid being exposed as the manipulative Machiavellian abuser/groomer she is. I can see it now, that doesn’t make it easy to let go of the idea — easiER but not easy.